Original articles by academic faculty, librarians and other researchers.

Volume 10, Issue 2

In this issue: helping young African-American scholars move toward new academic heights, six-foot-under censorship in the honor-bound Old South, and a Founding Father's focus on frugality shapes the American dream.

, Sue E. Denman Distinguished Chair in American Literature, University of Texas at San Antonio

Howard Rambsy II

, Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

For the last five summers, the two of us have coordinated the African American Literatures and Cultures Institute (AALCI)—a program for college students with interests in eventually pursuing graduate degrees. The Institute convenes on the campus of the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) for the month of June. The program has provided us with important opportunities to enhance undergraduate students’ learning and to orient them toward a broader as well as deeper realm of ideas concerning African American studies.

Moody founded the Institute in 2009, and has directed it since its inception. Her cultivation of the project emerged from her increasing alarm about the shallow pipelines of both under-represented populations in graduate programs in the United States and graduate students and other researchers devoted to sustaining African American literary and cultural studies. Influenced by Nellie Y. McKay’s famous essay, “Naming the Problem that Led to the Question ‘Who Shall Teach African-American Literature?’” (published in PMLA in May 1998), Moody applied endowed funds provided by the University of Texas at San Antonio to the creation of the AALCI.

In addition to serving as one of ten members of the AALCI Advisory Council, convened in 2009, Rambsy has functioned as the teacher and coordinator—in short, the Creative Master Consultant—of activities for the Institute. He determines the course curriculum and a variety of out-of-class activities that the students, or Fellows, participate in during their time in the Institute.

James L. Underwood, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Constitutional Law, University of South Carolina School of Law

On January 15, 1903, a little before 2 pm, South Carolina Lieutenant Governor James H. Tillman shot N. G. Gonzales, the unarmed editor of The State newspaper. The shooting occurred in Columbia, South Carolina, on the northeast corner of Main and Gervais Streets across from the State House, the bustling intersection of local business and politics. Gonzales had been on his way home to lunch. Tillman had just adjourned the state senate over which he presided, and walked out of the capitol accompanied by two unsuspecting state senators, George W. Brown and Thomas Talbird, who joined him for what they thought would be a pleasant stroll back to their hotel. The corner on which the shooting took place housed a clamorous streetcar transfer station, guaranteeing that there were many witnesses.

Some phrases have become common expressions because the works in which they appear were printed repeatedly in diverse publications. That is the only way they could have entered into such widespread popular usage. Such a phrase is “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and in a splendid bibliography Stephen M. Matyas, Jr., has traced its dissemination up through 1825.[i]

“Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise”; “Lost time is never found again”; “No gain, without pain”—these are other phrases that are part of our language, still seen by parents and grandparents as common-sense words of wisdom, maxims worthy of being instilled in the younger generation.

Welcome to The Readex Report

This online publication explores diverse aspects of digital historical collections and provides insight into web-based resources, including the Archive of Americana and Archive of International Studies.